


after

by Rhavia



Series: featherbed [4]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post battle of Winterfell, i'm really non-specific over what happens but it was a victory, this was going to be mildly smutty but instead ends on a sweet note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 16:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18578155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhavia/pseuds/Rhavia
Summary: “Arya,” he says, this time managing a whisper, as they part. It is a question, she realises, when he pulls back and his eyes search her for wounds. She should do the same for him, but he can stand and walk and speak and she knows that’s enough to mean he won’t die. Not today. Not here, not now, and at least not from this war. She kisses him again for good measure.





	after

**Author's Note:**

> Gendrya brought my writing muse back from the dead after 5 years and I am now utter shipper trash all over again.

They find each other some time after the battle.  
  
Arya had sought Jon first – for if he hadn’t made it, the next war to come was not one they could win. The white-haired Queen be damned; the North would follow Sansa to hell over a Targaryen but without her brother they were doomed to the rule of the seven hells and lord knows what that could bring. She may not care for the game but she knew the players, and his death was one she could not stand. Perhaps her sister had rubbed off on her.  
  
Last she had seen him flying towards the fray atop a dragon. How, she did not know. Arya had thought she’d known winter. She may have been born during the long summer, but her home had always been Winterfell – always touched by the frost of the north, she had grown knowing of the cold and the snow that those in King’s Landing did not. Death, death she knew well, intimately, but she did not know winter. The skies had blackened even as morn approached and under it’s blanket it was near impossible to tell friend and foe apart if not for the blue of their eyes.  
  
Winter brought with it a new face to death and she would be lying if she said she had not wanted to make its acquaintance. Now, she was glad for daybreak, and to see her brother at the other end of the battlefield, beaten and bloody but alive.  
  
Gendry she finds amongst the corpses and bones that scatter the snow.  
  
She is not looking for him. There are very few people this world has left for her to love and even fewer she trusts; in the moment she cares little for which allies may be left to fight down South. She is looking for life. Jon, Sansa, Bran. Family is all the Stark’s truly have left, be one a bastard and another renounced of his house, and she only knows one to be alive. But Gendry is family. Seeing him on his knees in the snow reminds her of that. _I can be your family._ That was not a promise made lightly – years may have separated them, even if very little had on the eve of battle, but he is the first and she suspects only found family she has left.  
  
He seems to hear her footsteps settle behind him. He brings his gaze down from the sky and turns to her. Relief is already awash across his face, the same relief she has seen on countless men in her steps through fallen bodies, but a ghost of a smile graces his lips as his eyes land upon hers. His mouth seems to form her name but before it can finish he is on his feet, striding towards her to close the gap between them. It is very different to last night, but she finds herself in his arms again all the same.  
  
She is lucky, she thinks, to have found two of the men she loves alive. Too lucky. She drowns the thought out by pressing her lips to Gendry’s, the flood of emotions overcoming her almost enough to warm the chill from her bones.  
  
“Arya,” he says, this time managing a whisper, as they part. It is a question, she realises, when he pulls back and his eyes search her for wounds. She should do the same for him, but he can stand and walk and speak and she knows that’s enough to mean he won’t die. Not today. Not here, not now, and at least not from this war. She kisses him again for good measure.  
  
They hadn’t exchanged many words last night. They should have, perhaps, but sometimes more can be said without. She had changed since she had last set foot in Winterfell. Everything had changed. Her family were not who she once knew and the months spent navigating their new boundaries had been tireless. Gendry had not changed. He had grown and hardened, as they all had, but he had treated her no differently. He had teased her as if years had not passed and it was a constant she had not known she needed. When she had laid with him, she did not know if they would change; but he had always belonged to her and she had hoped she was right.  
  
They are in the forge again before Arya realises. It is the last place men would go; the crypts are where their women and children are, and gods know whether they remained untouched. She tries not to think of Sansa. There is no use in rushing to find a corpse. Death is death.  
  
Right now, there is still adrenaline pumping through her veins from battle, a victory high, and she must do something with herself. She should rest but sleep hasn’t nestled in yet and clearly Gendry feels the same, for he has her pinned to the wall, his lips against her throat. Is it terrible, she asks herself, that she did not think of her siblings’ livelihoods during the long night but of being back in bed with him, makeshift or otherwise?  
  
Gendry pulls away to take her in and she realises she must have spoken her thoughts aloud because he is smirking at her, a disbelieving but cocky smirk. She feels herself flush, though she’s not sure it visible – she’s likely already red either from the cold or from his kisses, or worse from the blood of the soldiers she fought next to. She parts her lips but for a moment she doesn’t know how to justify herself. “I won’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind,” he says after a beat, and she knows he dragged the silence out longer than necessary to fluster her. She had done the same to him last night: she will give him this one.  
  
She wants him to continue where he left off, but she interrupts him instead by blurting out, “I’m glad you’re not dead.”  
  
It’s not quite as eloquent as she had hoped her first words to him would be, and as his smirk returns she wants to kiss it from his face. When all he says is, “Me too,” she hits his arm instead and he laughs. It’s an honest, giddy laugh, and it almost feels wrong considering the tragedy they just faced; but it’s infectious and she realises she’s smiling for the first time since they were last together. They had thought they were going to die. Maybe it is ok to be happy that they didn’t.  
  
Gendry rubs his arm, sobering up. “That wasn’t very ladylike.”  
  
“I’d say you’re far more of a lord than I am a lady,” Arya counters, and she believes it to be true not just because of his lineage. He has always been honest and kind. They were banded together through secrecy and lies all those years ago; her meant to be dead and him not meant to even be alive to begin with. She was young and too trusting, but he never betrayed her, and protected her from himself even when he knew not who he was running from.  
  
He gazes down at her like he did the previous night, eyes soft, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips like he can’t quite believe she’s here before him, like this. She’s not sure she would believe it either if not for the heat radiating between them. She had offered herself to him back then, to a point, and it had not been until last night that she had given him the rest of her, his hands rough, callouses lining his palms as he had taken her by the waist. She wonders if this time the new scars scattering his palms will catch on hers.  
  
“But you’re still _my_ lady,” he says finally, brushing a strand of hair from her face, caught between mud and blood. His expression doesn’t change, and there is a heaviness on her chest because neither have they.  
  
They don’t exchange words this time either, at least not at first; they don’t need to, they might not ever need to. But she sees his gaze linger on her scars again as she strips – not the fresh ones, for he knows where they came from – and she resolves to tell him everything. He may be the only person she both loves and trusts, and if there is no more wall in the North then perhaps she should take hers down too.


End file.
